Here's an awesome, if startling, new perspective of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Because it's over the open Gulf, it's really tough to get a sense of how big the spill actually is. Google Earth engineer Paul Rademacher built this utility (posted first by the Atlantic's James Fallows) with which one can overlay an image of the oil spill on top of a map of your choosing. Here's how it would look in New York City:
Keep in mind that the image is actually from back on May 6, and the spill has grown since then. For all my colleagues and the GOOD community back in Southern California, have a look at your neck of the woods:
And up around San Francisco Bay, you'll see that it stretches all the way out past Sacramento and Stockton:
And lest we leave out the middle of the country, here's Chicago:
And for good measure, here it is basically covering the entire Big Island of Hawaii:
You can try it out yourself right here, though you might need to add the Google Earth plugin, which I've found to be lots of fun anyway.
Share on Facebook
